Текст книги "Playing with Fire "

Автор книги: Kate Meader

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“Well, it’s a pretty good stunt!”

Sighing, Alex turned away from the crew, which was watching her avidly, waiting for her to break down in a girly puddle of mush, she supposed.

“He can light up every building from here to Bangkok. Maybe he’ll electrocute himself and do us all a favor. Gotta bounce.” She hung up with Kinsey and faced her crew. “Something to say, gentlemen?”

“Wouldn’t want to risk it,” Derek said. “Like my balls where they are. Outside my body.”

“I cannot believe you’re all on his side now. You’re supposed to hate his guts!”

“My union has spoken,” said Murphy, that fickle idiot.

Wy met her gaze. “He’s doin’ the best he can with what he’s got.”

God, where was Luke when she needed him? “You make it sound like he’s some emotionally stunted geek who doesn’t know how to speak to a woman. The guy is a professional bamboozler and that’s what he’s doing to you and everyone in this city. He’s not playing fair.”

“Who said love was fair?”

Ack! Her phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize. More media. She silenced it.

“I need it to be fair.” That’s all she had ever wanted. To be treated on the job not as a woman, but as an equal. To be treated on her dates not as a job, but as a woman. It wasn’t fair of Eli to throw his power around like a spoiled child because he didn’t like a particular outcome. He had so much at his disposal—money, charm, now the support of an entire city—and she had nothing but her titanium spine and justifiable sense of outrage.

“He’s an ass.”

“Sure is,” Wy agreed, rubbing his chin.

Her gaze zeroed in on the reddened knuckles of his right hand. “It was you,” she hissed. “You hit him.”

He pulled her aside into the corridor. “Of course I did. Did you think I was going to let him get away with what he pulled here? How he hurt you?”

“You don’t even know what he did.”

He gentled her jaw and forced her eyes up to meet his blue-gray ones. They sparkled with an intensity and passion she rarely saw because he was always so guarded. As a child, she had been closer to her other brothers, especially Gage. While Wy’s love and loyalty were never in doubt, he was the one who seemed to need them the least.

“He made my beautiful baby sister cry. That’s all I need to know.”

Here come the fucking waterworks again. “Oh, Wy,” and before she knew it he had enveloped her in his unyielding strength.

“I know how hard it is for you here,” he whispered against her hair, “and how you never once complain. Murphy rakin’ you over the coals, implyin’ you’re not tough enough for this job. I know what he’s been doin’ to you, but I also know that you can handle it. Because that’s how you’ve always been. So fuckin’ strong. And not once have I seen you lose it until this shit with Cooper.”

“I tend to eat my emotions,” she said on a sniff. “Burritos and ice cream get me through.”

He huffed a low laugh and she cheered a minor victory because Wy was so hard to crack.

She bit her lip. “Was it just one punch?”

“Yeah, I kept it fair. He didn’t fall over or anythin’, but it surprised him.”

“Good,” she whispered.

“He’s not going to give up, Alex. He enjoys the challenge, and now he’s got the touchdown of the election, you’re the conversion. That lawsuit he invented? Only a politician would come up with a scheme that twisted.”

She drew back, swiped at her eyes. “Right. And no matter how romantic Darcy thinks his shenanigans are or how swoonworthy Kinsey thinks that building love letter is, it comes down to this: I can’t trust him. Keeping me in the dark, trickery and lies, that’s his default setting. He doesn’t know any better, Wy. It’s ingrained in him because of his job.”

His genetics.

She would never betray his confidence, but knowing what she did about Weston Cooper put a gloss on the situation that no one else could see. Eli was upholding the legacy of a criminal to prolong his stay in the mayor’s office. It was a slap in the face to every true hero.

Eli Cooper and Sam Cochrane deserved each other.

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Shouldn’t you be getting home to your empty mausoleum and crippled dog?”

Eli looked up from his desk to find Madison leaning against the doorjamb, briefcase in hand, coat draped over her arm.

“Even Shadow can’t bear my company.” Last night, Eli’s sad sack vibes had driven Shadow to turn his back on his master in disgust and lie across the hearth. His banged-up puppy missed Alexandra. “Anyway, I have all I need here.”

Madison stepped inside. “You’d better be talking about scotch.”

Sighing, Eli pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich from the bottom drawer along with a couple of cut-crystal old-fashioneds. The city of Chicago had a zero-tolerance policy for alcohol on city property, but screw the rules. Tonight he planned to get well and truly smashed.

He poured a couple of fingers apiece and slid one over to Madison, who had taken a seat opposite. “What news of the campaign?”

“Numbers are perfect with a practically unassailable lead two days out. Operation Date-a-Firefighter was a stunning success. You terminated a little earlier than we had planned, but the overall benefit was the same.” She raised her glass. “To four more years.”

He stared her down. “Why didn’t we work out?”

She mouthed an “ah” and took a moment to consider. “You were too young and too drunk. I was too jaded and not drunk enough.” It left her lips sounding well rehearsed.

“No, later. In the last few years, we’ve had more dinners and spent more time together than most married couples, maybe had more sex than most married couples, yet we’ve never wanted to take it further. It’s not as if we don’t get along.”

“You have an aversion to commitment and I have an aversion to dirty socks on my bedroom floor.”

“I feel as though we could have overcome these obstacles.”

She knocked back her drink in one gulp and placed the glass down. Ever graceful, she stood and moved toward the window. It was where she did her best thinking.

“Remember that day you came to M Squared after Alex Dempsey had been maligned in the news for her dating escapades?”

He nodded, though she couldn’t see him. All her focus was outward over the city streets.

“You crashed through the door of the conference room, all fury and passion and vengeance, and beelined straight for her. Nothing else existed for you in that moment, only her.”

Not just in that moment. Since the first moment. In Smith & Jones, he had recognized something in her that he didn’t just crave. It was the part of himself he was missing. This good, pure thing he needed to wash away his sins and make him whole.

Brave, beautiful Alexandra, following in the footsteps of heroic giants. She’d accused him of appropriating her family’s legacy because his own was corrupted. Soiled. All true—God, what a dick he was—but as always, there was more gray than black-and-white in this sordid tale. Every decision Eli made before the age of thirty was to honor the father he had idolized since before he could walk. Law school, the Marines, Chicago’s mayor. Finding out what Weston Cooper had done, the monster he had become, had killed something inside of him.

This astonishing woman had shone light on his darkness, love on his blackened soul. Not her dead father and brother, not her CFD connection. Just Alexandra. And his heart ached for her.

He looked up to find Madison facing him, sadness haunting her eyes. “If I marry again, I’d like my future husband to look at me how you looked at Alex Dempsey. It’s what every woman deserves.”

Shit. So self-absorbed in his own problems, Eli had taken an age to realize how truly high up the scales of idiocy he had climbed. He was the worst friend ever.

“I’m sorry, Mads. I’ve been an insensitive ass.”

Lowering her gaze, she smoothed her skirt, picked some lint off it. “You’re a man, Eli. Insensitive ass is the job description. It’s my own fault. I thought if I pushed you toward her, we’d be killing two birds. A benefit for the campaign and you’d get her out of your system. Then you and I could go back to . . .” She palmed her brow, her distress palpable. With a mental hitch of her bootstraps, she morphed into tough broad Mads. “Don’t fret your giant, arrogant head. My feelings, my problem. I’ll get over you.”

There was nothing he could say that would make this situation better, so he kept his mouth shut. She walked to the door, pride in her stride, and turned when she got there.

“These oh-so-romantic gestures with the buildings are all well and good, and they certainly don’t hurt your campaign, but you’re not going to win her with flash. You can’t just Eli Cooper this problem into submission.”

“Then, what?” He felt like a cad asking the woman who still loved him, the woman whom he had never loved enough, how he could win the heart of the one he loved more than anything. But Mads had always given him the best advice. He doubted that would ever change.

“She needs what every woman wants, Eli. For you to walk into a room and see only her.”

Alex pulled on the tap for a pint of Guinness and let it settle for the requisite couple of minutes. Dempsey’s was half full. Not bad for a Monday night in February with no Hawks or Bulls game, ten below outside, and the general malaise of a city knee-deep in the armpit of winter. Tomorrow was Election Day, and the mayor was poised at a healthy 58 percent in citizen flash polling. As he only needed 50 percent plus one vote to get an absolute majority, the lead was considered virtually insurmountable.

“Not out celebrating with your boyfriend?”

Alex let go of a sigh, which turned into a growl because this was the kind of night, month, and year she had been having. “Murphy, my man, what can I get you?”

He climbed onto a stool, that dumb Irish potato head of his eyeing the draft beers like he didn’t already know what he was going to order.

Guinness, she mouthed just as he said, “Sam Adams.”

Huh, maybe an old dog could be taught a few new tricks.

A couple more of the Engine 6 crew trickled in. Derek Phelan took a seat beside Murphy and ordered a Bud. Gage brought a crate of Blue Moons up from the cellar and unloaded them into the bar fridge.

All around her, life kept calm and carried on, and she was supposed to be okay with it. She had her job. She had her family. Soon, she hoped, people would forget her part in the silly season entertainment.

She would not forget.

He would be a permanent fixture on the news for the next four years. He would be mentioned with disgust whenever a pay contract or the firefighters’ pensions were on the bargaining table. She would need to quit listening for his laugh. She would need to stop searching for his smile.

God, how she hated him, but mostly she hated this side of her he had unveiled. This weak, needy woman who wanted those long fingers plundering her body and the safe embrace of his made-for-her arms. All attached to the body of a Norse god with the mind of a sewer rat. She had let the domineering parts of his personality slide—his relentless pursuit of her, his crushing of the competition, his control of her in the bedroom—because it was sexy to be wanted that way. But she couldn’t be with a man who traded on the so-called heroism of the man who fooled the world. If he couldn’t see that, then Eli Cooper was not the man she thought he was.

The weather outside can bite me . . . The misery index inside was twenty below.

She looked around, craving a distraction. Derek to tell a dumb joke, Murphy to poke at her so she could whip out the bitch-slap, Kinsey and Darcy . . . to come rushing in like there was a flash sale on Victoria’s Secret undies?

“Did you see it?” Darcy shrieked, her eyes alive with excitement.

“Of course she hasn’t seen it,” Kinsey said. “Would she be standing here as calm as a Hindu cow if she had seen it?”

Everyone stared at her.

“Hindu cows are revered and safe from danger,” Kinsey clarified. “Hence, their calm.”

Okay. “What am I supposed to have seen?” If Eli Cooper had sent her another text-by-building, she was going to be furious, then thrilled, then furious again.

“Eli called an impromptu press conference.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Was I the subject of this press conference?”

“No,” her girls chorused.

Oh. Well.

“Didn’t mention you once,” Kinsey said, rubbing it in, a devilish gleam in her hazel eyes.

Disappointment chilled the space around Alex’s hammering heart. Eli giving up on the woo so soon was more disheartening than she expected.

Darcy handed over her phone. “Watch.”

Murphy and Phelan leaned in, Gage laid a chin on her shoulder, and she angled the phone so they could all see it better, then pressed the play button on the screen. The video started with Eli striding into the media room at city hall, a god among mortals, dressed impeccably, except his tie was askew and his hair looked like it did after a vigorous bout of debate. The horizontal kind.

Had he already sought out familiar female comfort? There was no sign of Madison. Maybe she was rearranging her clothing back in the mayor’s office.

“I have a prepared statement. I won’t be taking questions.”

His voice was low, dangerous, and as always, demanding of the fullest attention. A shiver of dread passed through her, like someone had danced on her grave.

“Almost four years ago, a few weeks after I took office as mayor, I came into possession of certain information about my father, Weston Cooper. This information, after I’d verified its accuracy, confirmed that my father had been engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Ronan Cutler, who was being investigated by the state’s attorney’s office at the time. The conspiracy involved my father revealing the moves of law enforcement and ensuring decisions by the state’s attorney’s office would be settled or manipulated in favor of Mr. Cutler and his associates. When my father decided to end this relationship, he was murdered by Mr. Cutler along with my mother.”

The hitch in his throat at the mention of his mom ripped Alex’s heart out of her chest.

“Although I had this information, I chose to keep it to myself for largely selfish reasons. I had just been elected and I convinced myself that it would have no bearing on my ability to do the job. I was my father’s son, but I did not emerge from the Chicago political machine, and in my hubris, I believed that I was above politics. I could separate myself from the past. From my father’s misdeeds.”

He paused at that moment. Looked out at the media vultures, but it was as if he didn’t see them. It might have been her imagination in thinking his eyes tilted toward the camera.

Toward her.

“I was wrong. My father’s false legacy as a great man gunned down for doing his job has gained me considerable political capital, even to this day. My use of it is an insult to the brave men and women who have and continue to put their lives on the line in the exercise of their duty every day. I have not engaged in any illegal activity, though I recognize that this claim might be suspect considering the source. But I have lied to people I cared”—he paused—“care about and manipulated the public trust. So yes, in that sense, I am my father’s son.”

“Knew he was a crook,” Murphy muttered, only to be hushed loudly by everyone else huddled around the phone.

“I am not withdrawing from the race. At this point I would rather let the Chicago citizens decide how this information might affect their vote. I recognize that this puts a different spin on things. In fact, I hope to God it does.” He stared at the camera again, those ice-pick blues challenging anyone who was listening. “I’ve been in a number of tricky situations, both personally and professionally, but none of them compare to the fight I am in now. The fight of my life.”

Alex clamped her hand to her mouth. The fight of my life.

Did he mean her?

The media room at city hall erupted, but Eli was already a ghost, the video’s end as abrupt as his exit. Shaking, Alex set the phone down on the bar and glared at it.

“That . . . that . . . idiot!” Not as colorful as her usual, but the best she could manage under the circumstances.

Five sets of eyes stared at her in shock.

“He’s only gone and demolished his chances.”

Kinsey narrowed her gaze. “Did you know about this? About his father? Is this why . . . ?” She waved a hand.

Alex rubbed her forehead. “Yes, he told—” She clammed up as Murphy and Derek were watching avidly. She’d been about to blab about Cochrane’s involvement, with his daughter and the gossips of Engine 6 in earshot.

“Let’s take this somewhere else,” Kinsey said, moving toward the other end of the bar.

“The public has a right to know,” Murphy whined.

“Read a newspaper,” Gage muttered.

Alex grabbed the Macallan and poured four extralarge doubles.

“You, too.” She pushed the glass toward Darcy. After Alex had downed her whiskey, she placed both palms on the bar.

“I think . . . I think he did that for me.”

Darcy’s expression was so animated that it was almost a shame to see the joy wiped off her face when she sipped the scotch. She stared at the glass like it had slapped her, then regrouped. “Certainly looks like it. He does something manipulative and dishonest, and now he’s wiping the slate clean with the one thing that will likely destroy his political future. It’s so romantic.”

Kinsey pursed her lips. “This from the girl who had a hissy fit when her man told her seven years later that he’d dumped her for her own good when they were teenagers.”

Darcy shrugged. “But I recognized that Beck’s decision was good for us in the long run. Eli’s had this information and he could have continued to hold on to it. He could have waited until after tomorrow when he would have been assured of the win. It’s not as if he could be driven out later—he’s not the criminal here. But telling people now, that’s . . .” She trailed off, apparently overcome with awe at Eli’s seemingly selfless actions.

Alex knew the feeling.

Yet the hurt and suspicious part of her wouldn’t let go. “But all these years he kept this secret, used it to prop himself up. How can I give him a pass on that?”

“You loved Sean, didn’t you?” Darcy shot back.

Alex jolted at the snappish tone in her friend’s voice and slid a glance at Gage and Kinsey. They merely shrugged, clearly as clueless as Alex.

“Of course.”

“Well, Eli loved his dad, too. He looked up to him, patterned his own life after the blueprint Weston Cooper created. He even went further and joined the Marines, and I bet his father’s memory was first and foremost that day he enlisted. Just like your heroes drove your decision to join CFD. What if you found out that Sean had been setting fires to make himself look like a hero, maybe even the blaze that killed him and Logan?”

“I’d be crushed,” Alex said quietly.

Darcy’s eyes flashed. “Eli found out that the man he had worshipped as a father and a hero was a fraud. Not only that, but this same man is the reason his mom is dead. Maybe he’s made some kind of sketchy peace with that over the last few years, but think how hard it must have been for him. How it must have destroyed him. I don’t pretend to know his motives for keeping it to himself. Political, self-serving, whatever. But maybe part of it was this need to hold on to the man who had defined his life. Keep the Weston Cooper he remembered alive.” She knocked back the whiskey, grimaced—bless her heart—and slammed her glass down with a so there.

Alex’s lungs had gone on hiatus. She knew Eli had adored his father before his world had been turned upside down, inside out. First with his parents’ deaths, then with the revelation about his father. Hearing that must have been like Weston Cooper dying all over again. And here she was judging him for his actions when she had no idea what pain he’d endured to make those calls. Instead of comforting him, she’d made it all about her.

Walk a mile, Alex.

If she ever needed the wisdom of her posse, it was now.

“Gage, what do you think?”

“I think he’s a piece of work, sis.” He threw an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “And I hate that he hurt you, but throwing himself on the grenade like that? It’s just wild. And Christ knows he’s probably the only guy who can handle how difficult you get.” He added a cheeky grin.

Next, she met Kinsey’s gaze, needing the guidance of this woman who was as much big sister as she was friend.

The ice-cool blonde looked disgusted as she thumbed in Darcy’s direction. “Hallmark Movie here might have a point.”

Darcy fist pumped the air. “You need to go down to city hall now! Like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill.”

Kinsey’s brows drew together. “Press conference is over, D,” and then to Alex, “Babe, you’re going to have to decide if this is a true leaf-turning moment—”

“Or just another move on the board,” Alex finished.

“What I know for sure,” Kinsey said as she extracted her phone and scanned the screen with an imperious eye, “is that right now, my boss is freaking the fuck out.”

“So Madison must be having kittens.” Brady passed a double scotch over to Eli, then took a sip of his own.

“Siberian tiger—sized ones.” He’d switched off his phone and holed up at Brady’s to get away from the press, but mostly from his campaign manager. She was pissed to all hell at him, and not quite so appreciative of the fact that he had merely followed her advice:

He’d walked into that media room, and all he saw was Alexandra.

Going deep cover also meant that Alexandra couldn’t get ahold of him—if she wanted to. He longed to go to her, fall on his knees, and tell her in private what he had already said in public. Had she understood what he was doing? This is how much I love you. I will destroy every barrier that separates us even if I end up destroying myself.

But who knew if it had any impact on her? Maybe she saw it as just another desperate stunt. The last play of a play-ah.

Best to let her sleep on it. She was the queen of the knee-jerk reaction, and any decision on her part should come from a well-thought-out place. He would ride out the next twenty-four hours alone. Or with a bottle of scotch as shotgun.

“Gage on shift tonight?” he asked Brady, silently praying he wouldn’t be here turning the scene into The Penis Monologues.

“At the bar.”

Maybe that’s where she was. His feet itched to charge over there and—what, exactly? Reap his reward for telling the truth at last?

“You want to see her,” Brady affirmed.

“So fucking bad.” Eli leaned back in the armchair and surveyed Brady’s loft. In the last couple of months, he’d added some comfortable furniture so it was less East Berlin industrial and more Chicago chic livable. Feathering his nest with Gage, he supposed.

“But I’ve done a lot of the running in this relationship and I need a sign from her that she wants this as much as I do. Wants us.”

Brady nodded his understanding. “It was the same with Gage—except he was chasin’ me down and I couldn’t figure out why.” A big smile lit up his face. “Of course, I’m not the most eligible bachelor this side of the Mississippi—”

“Fuck you.”

“And I ain’t been featured in People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue.”

“Jesus.”

“Twice,” Brady tacked on with smug grin.

Throwing the scotch would be a waste of good liquor, so Eli lobbed a cushion, which Brady caught with ease.

Eli sipped again, relishing the burn down his throat, taking a moment to find his way in the conversation. “That’s what I’m worried about. That I’m all shiny surfaces, too glib and shallow for a woman like that. Or that it’s all she’ll see. I fessed up not just so that I could make this black cloud that’s followed me around forever disappear, but also so I could be worthy of her. Look at her people, what they did, what they do.” He had never had to fight to impress—or win—a woman before. Low-down, in the dirt, bare-knuckled combat. The notion that looks, charm, or sheer willpower might not be enough was sobering.

Brady squinted at him, looking as thoughtful as Eli had ever seen him. “Has she seen you at your worst?”

From the cavalcade of stunts he had pulled to make her his to confessing how he had covered up his father’s crimes, Eli would say Alexandra had seen a side of him that was not exactly exemplary.

He nodded.

Brady dropped his gaze to the tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. “What you’ve done for me and your country, what you’ve done for this city, and what you did in that press conference . . .” He met Eli’s gaze head-on. “I’d say that she’s also seen you at your best. And if she can’t put all those parts together and understand the whole messy, fucked-up, human picture, then she hasn’t seen you.”